


petrichor

by mizael



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Blindness, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, ygoshipolympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4078120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizael/pseuds/mizael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His scars flower, grow life on dead skin like miracles but he doesn’t believe in those things. But the bouquet of peonies and daffodils cover the cracks in his psyche and pour nutrients like the rain outside does to the dirt and he feels the life restart in his heartbeat.</p><blockquote>
  <p>Juudai laughs, lets the sound brush over them both in waves that he remembers laughing like long ago. “Yes, it did,” and then: “Thank you.”</p>
  <p>He doesn’t need to see to know that Yuusei is smiling too.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	petrichor

**Author's Note:**

> wheezes loudly  
> four days of crying and writing

There are a lot of things they can fix, they tell him when he’s drugged to hell and back with anesthesia. Bones can be replaced, wounds can be closed, joints pushed back to place--so there’s no need to worry at all.

They don’t stop talking.

He doesn’t hear them: the sound of the crash still rings in his ears, played like some old record on a gramophone--it’s scratchy, it loops, it’s old, it’s _jarring_. He wants it to stop, please just _stop_ , and he wants the _world_ to stop, too, but he can only feel the shards of glass in his eyes and the harsh roll of tires on cement.

When the car stops, the world is a flurry of sounds and shouting (lights, too, he’s sure, but the glass clouds his vision). He’s rolled over the cement and then over clean tiles, and the wind from the speed sharpens all his wounds. He’s covered in so many bandages that he can’t even feel it.

Down the hall there’s a nurse that grips his hand--the only thing that’s not broken or bleeding--and tells him _it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be all right, we can fix it_ but he doesn’t say anything in response. His throat is bleeding, too. Blood runs like water from his body except he can’t feel a thing. Anesthesia, his mind tries to tell him but he’s so gone, so far off (the nurse lets go of his hand and tells him _you’ll be saved_ but then _what about him_? except he can’t speak).

The stretcher stops rolling shortly after that, and then there are too many voices for him to register. Someone takes his hand again and says _we’ll save you_ but he needs to _speak_ , needs to ask--

_What about him?_

(They put him under for the surgery and he dreams of pastel skies and warm sunsets, the smile of someone so bright that it’s seared into his memory. Every single color of the rainbow. His smile was like every single color of the rainbow.)

He wakes up the first time to blackness and the rhythmic beeping of _something_ next to him. He doesn’t remember where he is, how he got here, he needs to _go--_ except the beeping is interrupted by a louder one, continuous, now, and then suddenly he feels his mind going back again. The panic subsides. He returns to darkness.

By the fifth time he wakes up again he’s no longer so far from reality. The headlights of the car still play in morbid clarity in his mind as it draws closer to him and he feels the crash coming, but there’s a hand at his back and then he splits his skin open on the cement and there’s the loud screech of the car trying to stop and then--pain.

Agonizing, torturous pain. His arm bends and cracks, his flesh tears, glass flies in the air and rain like arrows on his skin, his palms, his _eyes_ \--the world from then on is black. His body no longer feels the pain, only eternal darkness. The world stops as he wants it to but not enough.

“Mister Yuuki?”

He has a thousand questions and they all threaten to spill from his mouth.

But he only asks the one. “How is--how is--”

“I’m sorry,” and his mind screams in agony but he doesn’t hear anything anymore. _What are you sorry for_ but he already knows. He just doesn’t want to hear it. She’s lying before she even opens her mouth.

“Please--”

“Mister Andersen did not survive the crash.”

They’re all liars.

(They couldn’t fix Johan, could they.)

* * *

The days pass by like slow torture, except Juudai isn’t sure he can feel any of it. His body feels numb, his mind even more so, and it’s only the incessant beeping of the machine next to him that makes him remember he’s still alive. Breathing. _Surviving_.

He’s here and he’s alive.

(But someone else isn’t.)

“Mister Yuuki, breakfast is here,” one of the nurses that tend to him speaks. A different one, today--he’d be inclined to notice if his mind wasn’t trying to break itself into more tiny pieces than he already is. “I’m going to feed you the soup first.”

A nod-- _his_ nod. He has to, if he wants to continue surviving. There’s a spoon at his lips and then something warm fills his tongue--soup, like she promised. He’s not entirely sure what kind; food tastes like ash now. A few more spoonfuls and then he leans back.

_That’s enough._

“Of course,” he hears the clatter of the spoon hitting the rim of the bowl. The nurse shuffles her papers and writes something down. Bad behavior, horrible eating habits, or something to that effect. A noise, more shuffling, and then the door. “If you want to eat more, please just press the button next to your right hand. A nurse will be down to help.”

He nods again and then the door closes with a click.

He’s been here three months and four days, a few spare hours if he wants to be perfect. The world is still black and it hasn’t changed. _Your eyes were not salvageable_ , he remembers the doctor telling him a few days after he woke. _I’m sorry._

They’re sorry for a lot of things, but Juudai forgives them. He’s had three months to, after all. And he’s fixed, like they promised. He can move his arms and his fingers and turn his head and lean back and forward and everything is _fine_ \--but that car still haunts him. The last few seconds of color he saw was Johan’s falling body--blue and red, what a horrible combination--and then the hail of clear glass.

The nurses all whisper that he’s mute from shock and trauma, but he laughs when he’s alone. No, not shock and trauma, just the feeling of emptiness. What is there left to say to someone who’s no longer here to listen? Those dreamlike days of soft sunsets are already so far gone from his reach. His own laughter sounds hollow in the symphony of hospital work outside, the beeping of the heart monitor inside.

He doesn’t know which is worse, the dreams of sunsets he still has and a world of color he still longs for but knows he will never have, or the ones where he’s living that crash over and over again, feels Johan’s hand on his back, pushing him away, because Johan has always valued Juudai more than his own life and Juudai--

\--he’s never felt the same.

“Hey, Johan,” despite all that, he still wants to speak. He’s still got words to say to a ghost he can’t even see. Just colors in his mind, now: teal, blue, white, and green. “I’m rather pathetic, aren’t I?”

 _Of course not_ , but he doesn’t hear that.

* * *

Five months, two weeks, two days now. He’s had the nurse read off the calendar every day with the morning routine as a way to keep him busy. A month ago they told him it would be fine if he went outside for a bit, and now every day is spent in the comfort of the sun and the great outdoors (much better than that hospital room with the beeping noise and the reminder that he’s alone).

“Do you need help getting into the wheelchair today, Mister Yuuki?” it’s the same nurse from the day he was admitted. He’s learned to distinguish between their voices: slight changes in pitch, the way they talk, the tone they use. Her name is Aki Izayoi, he’s been told. They’ve never properly been through introductions but then again, he doesn’t talk much.

“No,” all his responses are monosyllabic. Better than nothing, she says.

The railing around the bed is lowered by the buttons next to his hand and the wheelchair is rolled in. He can judge space now, too, via his ears. The wheelchair is rolled a foot from his bed (sounds like it) and he weakly touches the clean hospital tiles with his bare feet. Still not stable enough for shoes, but he feels better this way.

Walking is a chore, what with his spine still healing, but it’s better than sitting in bed all day. Two steps, and then he’s situated in the chair. Aki grabs the handles, rolls him out of the room and towards the nearest elevator to the ground floor.

He can feel vibrations, too, of people walking, running, rolling equipment like they roll patients around. Sometimes the elevator makes a noise, and he can tell when it gets to their floor before the light _ding_ that follows the doors opening. Five months and he’s getting better--he can see without his eyes. He’s still breathing. He’s still surviving.

_Ding!_

“Oh, Yuusei,” the warmth that floods Aki’s voice startles him out of his thoughts. Perhaps it’s because he recognizes that warmth too well, hears it in his voice when he speaks in his dreams to a silhouette long gone. Not Johan, definitely not Johan.

But close.

“Good morning, Aki,” rumbles and baritones respond. It lacks the same warmth that the nurse puts into her voice, but it’s still fond nonetheless. Close friends, maybe. “I was going to check in.”

“You know Zora will be happy to see you,” there’s still that bell-like ring of warmth, though smothered now. He hears footsteps--heavier than Aki’s, must be Yuusei’s--move away from the elevator and then the vibrations of the floor as the doors close behind him. Weren’t they supposed to go on that?

“I suppose,” amusement in the baritones. “Who’s this with you?”

“This is Juudai Yuuki--he’s a patient in the long-term ward,” the wheelchair is moved slightly, presumably in the direction that Yuusei is standing. “Mister Yuuki, this is Yuusei Fudou. He’s one of the interns in the hospital.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Yuusei says.

He responds with a thin smile, but no words to match the ones he’s been given. There hangs an empty and awkward silence in the air as people walk past, and perhaps Yuusei expects something of him, but Juudai is past the point of living up to anyone’s expectations. Yuusei shifts his weight from one foot to the other--he can hear it in the way he keeps on moving his shoes--unsure of how to respond, maybe.

“Mister Yuuki isn’t one for words,” Aki tries to dispel the heavy atmosphere. He feels her hands on his shoulders, comforting, kind, and then there’s tension that’s released that he didn’t even know he was holding. “But you can hold your hand out? And take off your gloves, too. It’s easier for him to recognize you.”

“Oh, sure,” confused, but he hears the shuffling of clothes--not the neoprene gloves that he hears every week when the doctors examine him, but cloth. And then he’s got Aki’s hands lifting his own up to meet Yuusei’s, clasping them tight around the other--

_He’s got ten large seashells in his arms that aren’t sand dollars, a smile wide on his face that’s as bright as the sun that beats down on them. There’s sand in every part of his clothes and his skin but he doesn’t care. He laughs, instead, and brings the seashells back over to a group of colorful umbrellas._

_A lady with blonde hair and hazel eyes counts up his total, then turns to the other people around her to do the same. And then someone with the lightest shade of pale blue hair runs up with eight. His best friend--he remembers now._

_“Juudai is the shell winner,” the lady declares, and he remembers laughing in delight._

_“Better luck next time, Shou,” he grins, and. “Gotcha!”_

_“No fair!” Shou turns his pleads to the lady. “Asuka, recount!”_

_“If it makes you happy,” she laughs._

_The totals are still the same (she recounts them twice). Shou withers with a pout and a groan, and Juudai continues laughing. Their friends coax them out of a second shell-collecting contest, lest they all find sand in their possessions even after they’ve left the beach. Shou agrees for his pride, and Juudai is just happy to return to the water._

_He remembers that he had wandered off a little too far after that, chasing hermit crabs and crustaceans for a promise of the best dinner bash. He’s always been good at fishing. But the sun draws nearer to the horizon and he needs to get back._

_A little ways from the beach there’s a series of rocks and the loud sounds of waves pushing against them. He climbs them easily despite the wet footholds and crevices, because nature has always loved him for some reason, and he’s quickly on top of the rocks after a bit._

_“Yubel!” he hears that warmth in his voice again--the fondness, the affection, the love--and watches as the person a little bit away from him looks up._

_“Juudai,” and he hears that warmth, too, directed back at him._

_“Yubel, you’re awfully far away,” he remembers the wind on their faces, reckless sixteen year old antics. The way aer eyes lit up when Juudai drew closer--one teal and one orange. Heterochromia, aer doctors always told aer, but ae never cared much. “Dinner’s going to start soon.”_

_“Will you be there?” ae asks, easily crossing the distance between them._

_Hands on his face, aer skin always felt rougher compared to his. He smiles something wider than when he won the shells; Yubel always deserves more than that._

_“Yeah, of course,” and feels the way aer fingers press against his cheeks. Ae’s always so warm, so beautiful, aer touch the softest of all despite aer callouses. He reaches up to take aer’s hands in his own--_

“Mister Yuuki? Mister Yuuki are you alright?” blackness again, the distress of the nurse behind him--Aki, right. Her name is Aki.

His hands are digging into skin, _calloused_ skin, nothing like the nurses or the doctors he’s ever held. Rough hands, stronger than his own. Used to doing heavy work. He lingers far longer than necessary on them--they remind him of something else, someone else--and then when Aki says his name again, Juudai lets them go.

“I’m so sorry, Yuusei,” Aki’s heels click when she moves. Surprisingly, though, she doesn’t move to Yuusei, but in front of him. Her hands are in his, now. “Mister Yuuki, are you alright? Do we need to head back to the room?”

“No,” short and to the point. He’s fine.

“If you say so,” she squeezes his hands gently, and then her heels click again as she moves back to wheeling him around. “What about you, Yuusei?”

“He’s got a grip,” not anger, but just surprise. It stays in his voice. “But I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Of course,” the warmth returns to her voice.

“Well then, I’ll see you later, Aki, Mister Yuuki,” there are footsteps away, but Juudai can’t let him go yet.

“Juudai,” he finds himself saying, and it’s enough to startle Yuusei into stopping. Aki’s grip on the handles loosen--in surprise, perhaps. “Call me Juudai.”

Maybe Yuusei smiles. “I’ll see you later, Juudai.”

* * *

“He spoke today,” is the first thing Aki says when she greets her usual guest at the receptionist’s desk. “More than just yes or no, I mean. He spoke a sentence.”

The two men in front of her look at each other and then back to her. She thinks they’re such an odd couple--skinny and lanky and then the muscular build. Well, they’re not a couple _couple_ , but they visit together far too often.

“What did he say?” the one on the right makes a worried glance. Australian, she’s figured out. His accent is too heavy to hide much.

Aki offers a small smile. “He was correcting someone,” she says, looks at the computer in front of her and then scans their IDs. Jim Cook. Austin O’Brien. “Yuusei--he’s an intern here--called him ‘Mister Yuuki’ like I do. He corrected him to ‘Juudai’.”

Another shared look, and then O’Brien speaks. “Could we speak to Yuusei?”

“I’m sure he’s a good guy,” Jim offers his companion a smile, as if to deter any jumbled thoughts. “Besides, Juudai comes first. It’s why we’re here.”

“But we can make a stop on our way up,” he’s still a little suspicious.

“Or down. Juudai first.”

The light on the monitor turns green. They’re in the clear.

“I suppose I don’t have to show you where his room is,” Aki says.

Jim’s smile is strained. “Been here too many times for that, now.”

* * *

For the first time in a while, Juudai wakes up to the chirping of birds outside his window, too different from the stagnant, boring beeps of the heart monitor next to him. He enjoys it for what it’s worth--a little happiness like this doesn’t come often. When the birds sing, he can see colors in his head.

Happier times, his mind tells him. You’re recovering, aren’t you? Slowly, but surely.

“The heart monitor says you’ve woken up, but I really can’t tell,” the voice next to him is unfamiliar, and yet familiar all the same. He racks through the database of voices stored in his head, trying to match it to a name. Not one of the nurses. Not Jim or O’Brien. Not anyone else that frequents his room for checkups or any of the doctors.

It’s rumbles and baritones.

Oh--Yuusei.

_Aer eyes still leave marks on his soul. Aer words are even worse. And yet, nothing will ever stop the way aer smile still stays in his mind._

_Ae left in a crash, too--a crash of tidal waves against the rocks._

_He had to go and ae wanted to follow. But ae couldn’t follow, he couldn’t let aer. He told aer that he didn’t love aer, that he never did, that it’s best if ae forgot about him._ _The way ae looked at him, teal and orange in an unholy matrimony of heartbreak, made him almost want to cry._

_“I didn’t really mean it,” he’d wanted to say but couldn’t._

_The waves still crash in his mind._

He makes a nod of acknowledgement. There’s some shuffling, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, and then the familiar roll of a wheelchair across the tiles. He furrows his brows in confusion. Where’s Aki?

“Aki has a meeting today,” Yuusei picks up on his facial expression. “And a test. She’s going for her medical license, did you know? She’s only working as a nurse to make the medical school bills.”

A flip of paper, writing on clipboard. Yuusei’s writing sounds much more rough than Aki’s--her hands are soft, her writing sounds like tiny _scritch-scratches_ in contrast with Yuusei’s longer drags across the paper. Those tiny differences are something he can pick up on now. He’s adjusting.

“Did you want me to read you today’s date?” another nod. “It’s June twenty-eighth.”

Five months, two weeks, four days. He’s been in the hospital for that long.

“I’m Yuusei, by the way,” he already knows but lets him go on. “We met just two days ago.”

The railing around the bed is lowered by a few taps of some buttons, and then Juudai gets into his normal routine of going outside. Yuusei is kind enough to let him struggle without a word, unlike Aki who always comes rushing to his aide. Perhaps he knows what it’s like to want to keep on going, but sometimes he just doesn’t have the strength to do it.

When he’s finally seated in the wheelchair, Yuusei easily takes the handles and rolls him out of the room.

“Is there someplace you want to go today?” Yuusei asks.

He’s never been asked where he wants to go, probably because he never answers, but the gesture is appreciated. He’ll try this time, for Yuusei.

“I…” no, it’s not like the words won’t come out of his throat. He’s always had the ability to speak--he just didn’t see fit to use it when the words don’t matter anymore (he’s afraid he’ll say something more than just directions, afraid he’ll let his wounds spill out of his mouth). A swallow. “Courtyard.”

“Sure,” Yuusei doesn’t question him.

They ride the elevator in terse silence, something that he’s heard the other nurses complain about when they think he can’t hear. His hearing has sharpened, along with every other sense that he still has that wasn’t taken from him like his eyes. He hears.

_Ding!_

Yuusei greets the other nurses and workers with a friendly _hello_ and probably a wave or a nod. Juudai just lets him carry on as he does. The comforting roll of the wheelchair on tiles soon dissolves into the rough road of dirt and the outdoors. The sun beats as it always does and that’s one constant he can always count on.

Yuusei sits him down on a bench (says it’s close to a tree and has enough shade) and they spend the silence of the morning and early noon in each other’s company. Aki--she has a tendency to always ask if he needs something every so often, but Yuusei stays silent. He enjoys it more like this.

The silence also lets his thoughts drift to where he doesn’t want them to. The crash always replays in these moments--each day, though, it gets weaker. That’s some sort of victory, right?

But no, not today. It doesn’t replay today.

This time, it’s warm, soft hands, much bigger than his own. There are callouses on palms that feel like tiny bumps when he runs his fingers over them. The skin, too, is rougher. He’s lived a life that doesn’t require much labor, but the hands beneath his have.

He clasps his own hands together and feels the warmth flood them. Nothing like what he experienced the other day. They were--they were _sun kissed_.

He wants to feel that again.

_(He’d introduced himself as Johan, Johan Andersen. He was transferring in from overseas for a little while. The way they shook hands was like when Juudai held aer, touched aer, and he desperately clung to those sparks like a lifeline.)_

“Listen,” and that startles him out of his thoughts enough for him to realize that Yuusei is talking. Not towards him; the sound of his voice is projected elsewhere. Yuusei isn’t looking at him (he’s not sure he’d want to look at himself, either). “I know it’s really none of my business, but, for what it’s worth… what you’re going through…”

“I don’t need your pity,” the words tumble out of his mouth before he can process that he’s spoken. They’ve all tried to get through to him before. He’s refused every time, and even if Yuusei is the one is to say it, he doesn’t want to hear it.

“I’m not trying to,” but he doesn’t sound defensive, either. “I just want to say I know it’s… hard.”

“Hard,” Juudai repeats, like he’s holding in laughter at the end of his tongue. “ _Hard_.”

“I lost something, too. _Someone_ , too.”

It shuts him up quickly enough. He doesn’t know what to say now, as if Yuusei is the one who needs comfort and not him. The silence strains, and for once he feels the need to break it.

“I’m sorry,” and it’s all he can offer. Too caught up in his own problems that he doesn’t notice the world around him--O’Brien’s said it many times. By the time he wakes up it would have been a century and the world, foreign and unlike what he remembers, will just cause him to go back to slumber. An endless cycle.

“It’s fine,” Yuusei exhales. “It’s been two years. I’ve gotten better at it.”

 _Have you really_ , he wants to ask, but it isn’t his place to pry--just like it isn’t Yuusei’s.

* * *

“How was Juudai today?” Aki is still in her pinstripes, tights, and heels. Wine red, like the rest of her.

“Better,” Yuusei shrugs off his uniform and pulls on the black muscle shirt he always likes wearing. “He talked, today. A lot more than you said he would.”

“Did he?” her movement stills. “What about?”

Yuusei stays quiet for a moment, pulls on his blue coat. “I talked to him,” he says. “About Bruno.”

“Yuusei, you don’t have to--”

“I wanted to,” he sighs. Aki draws closer in the way she does when she’s worried about him, hand on his cheek and eyes full of warmth. Yuusei appreciates the gesture with a smile, although strained. “Seeing him…”

“Does he remind you of yourself?” Aki asks.

“Yeah,” he responds. “Two years ago when I…”

“It’s not your fault,” she’s so used to doing this, he realizes. She’s always ready with a word, a sentence, a paragraph, whenever he starts.

But he sees that scene again, in the way Juudai probably still sees that car--the thrill of the high speeds, the carelessness as they drove down the empty highway on their motorcycles, laughing about everything and anything, promising an even better night when they got back.

And then that truck, unexpected in all facets, that appears in their vision and Yuusei sees it quickly enough to slam his brakes and Bruno, too, but he’d been complaining about something wrong with his engine, something Yuusei promised he’d fix but never got around to it when Bruno likes taking care of his own vehicle. Something that he regrets in that moment when Bruno’s brakes don’t work and the agonizing sound of a crash.

He’s already spent two years with _what ifs_ and _if I onlys_ and probably more than that. He runs that scenario in his head so many times, so many different ways--maybe things could have been different, maybe if he just pressed harder to see Bruno’s motorcycle, maybe, maybe, _maybe_.

“Trust me, it’s not your fault,” she repeats for him. “Not at all.”

He smiles a thanks, and they leave the room in relative silence. Yuusei throws her the extra helmet when they get close to his motorcycle.

“He said ‘I’m sorry’,” Yuusei says when Aki’s legs are thrown over the motorcycle and her arms around his waist. It had taken him the better part of his two years to ride one again. “He refused to listen but he said sorry.”

* * *

Aki isn’t seen for the next few weeks, not while she has finals, Yuusei tells him. They spend a little more time together in her absence when Juudai’s not eerily silent and brooding in his room, mind too deep in places where Yuusei can’t even reach.

He’s asked about it before, to Aki, to the other nurses, to the doctors that check up on him every week, and they say they don’t really know. So, Yuusei checks the visitor roster and Juudai’s timetable and finds that no more than three different people come to visit him: Jim Cook and Austin O’Brien are the frequent ones, and the last--but rare--one is another long-term patient by the name of Ryou Marufuji.

He tries to ask Jim and O’Brien about his other friends, his _support network_ that he needs right now but they just shake their heads at him. They’ve only known him for as long as Johan Andersen has known him and when they all transferred into his university, Juudai spent most of his time alone.

Ryou, however, goes silent at his question and takes a much longer time to speak. His voice is strained, his stance tired, and there are even more machines rumbling in his room than Juudai’s (heart failure, Aki tells him) and then--”It’s not my place to tell you. But no one knows he’s here.”

“But why?” Yuusei can’t fathom going so far out of reach from his own friends--sure, he’ll take that alone time every now and then and yes, sometimes he _does_ work better alone but to forsake his friends completely is unheard of.

“He doesn’t want them to know,” Ryou says, and, hesitant: “He didn’t leave on good terms.”

Yuusei doesn’t get much more than that.

But he rolls Juudai out of his room everyday, exchange polite greetings when he’s awake enough to recognize it’s Yuusei (again), and sits him down in the same bench under the tree (the one with the decent amount of shade). Mornings pass like this, noons sometimes, too, and then before Yuusei knows it’s already been a month.

“What’s today’s date?” Juudai has gotten better at speaking, at asking, at _communicating_ in general. But that monotone is still a long way to go.

“July twenty-eighth,” Yuusei dutifully reads off the calendar. And then, formalities: “Do you want breakfast now or later?”

“Later.”

And then he’s walking--he’s gotten better at that, too--towards his wheelchair (and sometimes he can even make it across the room, legs shaking and stilling and locking but he keeps pushing forward with the determination Yuusei could not have seen a month ago). After that, it’s the courtyard and the bench and the pleasant silence.

“Juudai,” he starts on his usual conversation when at least an hour has passed enough for him to collect his bearings. “Would you like--?”

“You also hurt someone, didn’t you,” the tone isn’t accusatory at all but it still knocks the air from his lungs and Yuusei is quick to snap his head around at him. Juudai isn’t looking at him (he can’t, he tells himself), but those faded white eyes (what color were they before?) stare straight into his soul and pass judgement like he’s some criminal.

“I didn’t make you show me yours,” and it’s out of his mouth before he can filter them because Yuusei has already spent two years thinking about it and he’s over it (he likes to tell himself). But, his eyes break away to the floor and, quietly: “I don’t mean that, I mean…”

“No, you meant it,” Juudai says but there’s no malice in his voice. If anything, a smile pushes at the edge of his lips.

Yuusei finds himself entranced. “Juudai,” he tries to speak but Juudai just shakes his head.

“I tell myself that I never loved him,” Juudai’s eyes move from his face and then they’re staring out ahead, pure white and never working and Juudai can’t see at all but it’s as if he already knows what’s there without them. “I think I did, though.”

“Andersen?”

He nods. “I think he knew that he was a replacement, but he still stuck with me.”

“A replacement for what?”

Juudai doesn’t speak for a long time, his hands balled into tiny fists, but he doesn’t have the strength to keep them for long. Minutes pass, and then an hour, and soon enough one of the nurses comes out of the hospital to call for them to come back.

Yuusei helps him back to his wheelchair and it’s only a short five minutes to his room, prolonged by the wait for the elevator. Juudai doesn’t make a fuss when he walks back to his bed, and Yuusei feels as though he’s back at square one in that tense silence of monosyllables and half-hearted responses.

* * *

He’s desperate, he feels like, walking alone in the darkness and the blackness with nothing but sounds to guide his way, like the tempting aroma of a meal just out of reach. He can smell, but he can’t eat, no matter how much he wants to.

“It’s raining today,” Yuusei tells him, but Juudai already knows from the quiet pit-pats on the glass to his left. “We won’t be able to go outside.”

“That’s fine.”

They descend into their usual silence. He hears the sound of pens on paper, Yuusei adjusting his seat so that he can use one of the counters as a desk. _Engineering_ , Yuusei told him once when Juudai didn’t even ask, but wanted to, and then, like an afterthought, followed up with: _mechanical_.

The quiet sounds of writing, the rain in rhythmic beats outside, the silent but shared companionship--

_Johan’s laugh is the first thing that breaks their silence, a paperback book in his hands and tears at the corner of his eyes. He’s leaning back dangerously on his chair, balancing on two legs instead of four, but Juudai isn’t one for safety either and so he doesn’t notice._

_It’s no surprise at all when that laugh turns into a startled yelp and Johan’s back hits the floor. He had grinned and laughed, torso hanging off of the bed, staring upside-down at Johan’s distress. “Be careful next time,” except it’s more teasing than anything and Johan’s pout sends him into another round of laughter._

_“Yeah, well, see how you like it,” and then Juudai’s legs are lifted off the bed and he hits the ground much in the same way as Johan did._

_Laughter, loud and rambunctious. Johan holds a hand out to him on the floor. “Come on--”_

“Juudai!”

He doesn’t realize his hands are shaking until Yuusei grips them between his own and squeezes hard enough to hold them in place. He must be delirious, too, when brings his hands up (still wrapped up in Yuusei’s) to his face and buries it in Yuusei’s palms, and he’s got tears he doesn’t remember ever shedding going down his cheek in streams.

He misses him and, while maybe he didn’t love him, at least, not in the way Johan would have wanted--he wants to feel that spark of touch again. That _I’m here_ and _for you_ and _we’re here together_. It’s sappy and mushy, something he would have never thought of as himself, but Yuusei is patiently wiping away all the water that comes from his eyes even if his own hands are getting wet and dirty.

It’s overwhelming, how much Yuusei cares enough to stay even after he stops crying (wailing, muttering curses under his breath and showing the first real signs of emotion he’s kept bottled up the past six months), and slightly unfair, too. He can’t see what expression Yuusei’s wearing but he can feel the gentleness in his touch, the way he never stops whispering _it’s okay, I’m here, Juudai, Juudai_.

_(They aren’t anything like aer’s.)_

“Thank you,” he manages to say after a while, when his tears have run dry and the trashcan nearby has a handful of tissues added to its bin. “I’m…”

“It’s fine,” Yuusei’s voice is still gentle (like this touch) and still close. “Are you alright now?”

“Yes,” and it’s not a lie this time. He doesn’t know what happened--one second, the rain, and the next, Johan. Perhaps it’s the way Yuusei’s presence comforts him, the way Yuusei reminds him of the nights and the days he misses so much--with both of them, both Johan and Yubel--or the way Yuusei gives but never takes, never _expects_ to be given.

The rain still pours outside with its _pit-pat pit-pat_ and Yuusei’s hands haven’t left his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks as if waiting to wipe away anything else he cries. There are sparks that he remembers, it’s an all too familiar feeling, and brings to his gut the hollow feeling of another touch he yearns for.

He’s done so much already, with these sparks--he doesn’t want them.

But he’s human and he’s lonely and he misses that crack of blue between hands and fingers, between skin and flesh, and if he doesn’t take it now he’ll never have it again.

“Hey,” and there’s that bold feeling that swells in his chest, familiar as the hands on his face. He can’t remember the last time he felt like smiling, a genuine one, now that his demons are gone. “Yuusei.”

“Juudai?” maybe he’s smiling and he can’t feel it because it’s so natural, just like he used to, because Yuusei’s voice is surprised--breathless, even--but it’s the good kind, the pleasant surprise.

“Do you mind if I--?”

“No,” Yuusei’s hands tighten on his face. “No, I’ll--I’ll do it.”

Lips, rough and dry, somehow still soft, and Juudai leans closer for their kiss. There are the sparks he wanted but they--they’re so different. Not like the ones he chased after in the image of Johan, of Yubel, but softer. He’s sure, maybe, that perhaps Johan’s was different too and he never noticed in his grief and self-pity, but Yuusei’s _is_ and he _notices_ and he won’t let that slip away again.

He’s breathless when they part--Yuusei, too, because he hears it in his breathing and the way his hands don’t leave his face. Breathless and happy.

And alive.

“Does that answer your question?” Yuusei asks even though he never said anything. But he knows, just like Juudai, that something… something like _that_ \--

(His scars flower, grow life on dead skin like miracles but he doesn’t believe in those things. But the bouquet of peonies and daffodils cover the cracks in his psyche and pour nutrients like the rain outside does to the dirt and he feels the life restart in his heartbeat.)

Juudai laughs, lets the sound brush over them both in waves that he remembers laughing like long ago. “Yes, it did,” and then: “Thank you.”

He doesn’t need to see to know that Yuusei is smiling too.

_In his mind’s eye, Yubel smiles at him by the bedside, and Johan, too._

_“Continue living,” they say._

He does.


End file.
